the ocean in a cup
by tielan
Summary: It is not possible to carry the ocean in a cup, but perhaps the ocean is not meant to be carried. [Mako/Raleigh, post-movie]


**the ocean in a cup  
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It is not possible to carry the ocean in a cup.

~oOo~

Mako wants peace. She's lived at war for so long, with no more goal than to kill the _kaiju_, even if it was only by repairing a Jaeger. She's lost _sensei_, the Weis, the Kaidonovskies, Chuck…and if she's killed _kaiju_ and closed the breach, it leaves her without a job, without a goal, without anything to do that she knows how to do.

When the PPDC announces a celebratory world tour, starting from the Lunar New Year, Mako bolts.

Well, not _bolts_, because Mako doesn't do things recklessly. That's not who she is. She considers the angles, the options, the contingencies. She holds the miracle mile; she doesn't go fishing.

She also doesn't tell Raleigh she's leaving.

Yet he's waiting on the steps to his room the morning she comes out with a satchel over her shoulder, his duffle lying at his feet like a faithful canine companion.

Guilt ignites within her as their eyes meet.

"May I go with you?"

It would be easier to resent him if he just assumed he was accompanying her.

But Raleigh has become polite and careful in their interactions, although she's seen him joking with Tendo, reaching out to Herc, chatting with the techs, even mediating between Hermann and Newt. It hurt a little, but Mako accepted that it was better this way. They only Drifted together three times, and now that the Breach is closed, their partnership is no longer necessary.

Mako intends to say no. She truly does. But her lips form the word before she can stop herself.

"Yes."

~oOo~

She falls asleep against him on the train ride up to Beijing, relaxing against his shoulder while he holds himself utterly still and tries not to think about how she was going to leave him behind.

Raleigh turns his head just far enough so his cheek rubs against the silk of Mako's hair.

~oOo~

Mako weaned herself off Raleigh Becket for a reason. No more sharing a bed. No meals together unless in company. No casual physical contact.

He made it too easy to cling to him, to cuddle in close as nobody has let her do since she was a child. _Sensei_ was loving but careful, too, and Tamsin was casual and caring but reserved.

Until she Drifted with Raleigh, Mako didn't realise how much she missed that unthinking intimacy.

But she was no longer the child who hugged _okaa-san_ when she came home from school, who laughed as she was swept up into _oto-san_'s strong arms. And Raleigh will not settle for hugs and cuddles in bed – not when Mako can feel the hunger in him, burning in his skin like the furnace of Gipsy Danger's heart beneath her steel plates.

His need terrified her then – and still does. What if she fails it, fails him? This is not a war and he is not something she can take apart, fix, restore, rebuild. Raleigh has been broken once before and parts of him are still so fragile. Better to leave him to lick his wounds and heal than to turn around one day and discover she has papered over his cracks too well.

She was taught to be self-controlled, disciplined, even as a child. It was never easy, but sometimes – sometimes – it was necessary.

Telling herself it was necessary for Raleigh's good made keeping the distance a little easier.

~oOo~

She asks which side he prefers, and he tells her he's okay to sleep on the inside. But when he climbs in, Raleigh leaves plenty of room between them and makes sure he lies turned away from her.

He falls asleep with his fists full of blanket and his arms empty of Mako.

~oOo~

Mako wakes to the scent of clean linen, crisp and warm.

The space beside her in the bed is empty, and when she cracks one eyelid open, Raleigh is standing at the table, folding clothes in nothing more than a pair of old, ratty jeans that hang low on his hips.

The marks of the drivesuit stand out across his back and shoulder, still-tender pink and angry scarlet against the natural pale of his skin – the old and the new. Piloting Gipsy Danger solo this time wasn't as harrowing as it was at Anchorage, but the circuits still seared his skin raw.

"I found a laundromat in the next street." He doesn't even need to turn to know she's awake. No wonder he knew she was leaving. "I think we were beginning to stink a bit. Well, I was, anyway."

Mako makes herself sit up, scraping her hair back out of her face as she blinks. "You did the laundry?"

"I couldn't sleep and it needed doing."

That's his attitude to nearly everything – it needs doing, so he'll do it.

Since they moved into this one-room apartment, Raleigh's managed them both - everything from rations and rent to cooking and laundry. It's not that Mako can't; it's just that, right now, everything feels like an effort, from getting out of bed and leaving the apartment, down to finishing the meals set before her.

She misses_ sensei_. In spite of being an adult and self-sufficient, of having fought the _kaiju_ and closed the Breach with him, she misses the knowledge that he is still there – that she could call him at any day, any hour, and he would answer her.

His absence weighs upon her, grief crushing her spirits and draining her energy.

It's Raleigh who gets her up and out into the world every couple of days, who sits with her and watches daytime television in languages he only just understands – who manages the minutiae of everyday living.

In spite of her original plans, it takes Mako all of two days to realise she doesn't have the strength to do this alone. Without Raleigh – without his prompting and energy and drive – she thinks she would have coped but it would have taken everything she had and left her with no hope of getting out of her funk.

There's professional help, of course, but that would mean going back to the PPDC.

She just wants peace.

Perhaps it's a dangerous reliance, but she's grateful for him all the same.

~oOo~

This time of year is always hard, but last year was particularly bad given the leap day. Tonight, Raleigh trembles for a moment in the wash of light and noise and the scent of rough beer, wanting nothing more than a drink and a fight.

Mako's waiting for him, though, so he walks home to her in the enveloping darkness.

~oOo~

Half-asleep, Mako struggles to make sense of the sounds in the darkness, doesn't know what it can be. Then Raleigh grunts, strangled and short. The mattress shifts, like a long weight just jackknifed into a little ball.

Mako paws for the light switch, her left arm nerveless, fingers fumbling with the switch. "Raleigh!" She flattens her hand against his spine, slides it over his shoulder to roll him onto his back.

Blue eyes flutter open, blinking at her, and for a moment his eyes widen. "Yance?"

Mako's heart stumbles. Her chest is burning, a hole of charred cinder and ash in her soul.

By the lamp's warm glow, Raleigh looks like the young man who grinned out at the world from the PPDC promotional posters – the one who would fight for the world with his brother by his side.

Her vision blurs. There is nothing she can say or do in this instant that won't shatter his heart anew. She blinks away the tears and makes herself watch as the realisation sinks in – the cold reality that his brother is dead and his co-pilot is a woman he has known for barely six weeks.

"Mako." His adam's apple bobs as he chokes back his pain.

"ごめんなさい," Mako murmurs – an inadequate regret by an inadequate substitute for the brother he lost.

Raleigh shifts under her hands, one hand coming up to grip her arm - the cold one, the left side that was wrecked in the fight against Knifehead – and suddenly there's heat and warmth and feeling in her flesh again.

"Stay." He tugs her down against him, tucked against his side. "Please."

Mako settles with her head on his shoulder, his heartbeat swift and grieving beneath her hand on his chest.

She can't replace his brother, but she can hold him tonight.

And tomorrow _she_ will look after _him_ instead.

~oOo~

Raleigh wakes groggy and exhausted, with the sizzle and scent of frying things overlaying the bounce of Shibuya pop as Mako flips radish cakes and hums to the music. She doesn't look around at him as she asks, "Are you hungry?"

He is – just not for food. But breakfast is what Mako has to ease him through his grief, and so breakfast is what Raleigh gets.

~oOo~

It gets a little better after that.

There are still days when Mako doesn't get out of bed, but there aren't so many of them now.

She still grieves and misses _sensei_, but the ache is beginning to fade. Raleigh's suggestion of professional help and medication is rejected; he doesn't seem to realise how his presence helps – the need she feared now becoming a goad to push her to get up, to do the chores, to be more than a burden on him.

And Raleigh helps in other ways.

"Tell me about him," Raleigh says one evening as he's preparing dinner. "About Pentecost."

"Why?"

"I never really knew him. He was 'The Marshal' to everyone I knew. Except you."

"But you have been in my memories."

"That's the Drift." He looks up from the fresh vegetables they bought with their ration tickets. "And we were kind of fighting _kaiju_ at the time, so it all gets a bit blurry. Besides," he gives her that little half-smile, as he takes up the quarter cabbage and starts slicing it up. "I'd rather hear the stories from you."

With the crunch of vegetables being sliced, there's a moment when Mako is somewhere else – a small apartment that smelled of burning sun and the salty sea, the weather uncomfortably warm and the air too thick for breathing

"He cooked for Tamsin once," she says, remembering strong fingers gripping the vegetables as he chopped with sure movements. The girl she'd been wondered if there was anything he didn't know how to do. "A dish from their childhood – bubble-and-squeak. I don't know why it was called that – _sensei_ could not say."

"I've heard of it," Raleigh murmurs. "Was it good?"

"I did not think so." Bland and heavy and too hot for the weather. "But Tamsin ate all her share." More food than she'd eaten in previous days, and looking up from her plate to meet _sensei's_ smile with her own bright grin.

It's a good memory.

"Tamsin Sevier? His co-pilot in Coyote Tango?"

"Yes. She died in November. Cancer." Mako thinks of _sensei_ pausing on his tour through Gipsy Danger, his hand pressing against his chest as though short of breath, his attention abstracted and distant. She knew something was wrong, but not what – not until the phone call. "_Sensei_ knew before they told him."

She looks at Raleigh and wonders; if something happened to him, would she know? Would he?

"Yes." Raleigh meets her gaze and answers the question she doesn't ask. "I'd know."

~oOo~

Mako's not running anymore. Not from her grief, not from him. She maintains the space between them when they go to bed, but sometimes he wakes up to find her curled towards him, her lashes thick and soft against her cheek, one hand tucked in close by her body, the other resting in the space between them.

Sometimes Raleigh reaches out to cover her hand with his, but he always draws back before they touch.

~oOo~

Mako's not sure where it begins. If it begins at all or if it's always been there and she just didn't notice – if she _made_ herself not notice.

She wakes on Raleigh's side of the bed more often, as though she's rolled over after he's gotten out and snuggled down into the warmth and scent of him.

Her skin tingles when he touches her: a hand on her shoulder as he moves past her, fingers on her wrist when he laughingly fends her off in a mock-fight, his mouth against her temple in a brief, brisk kiss.

And she struggles to breathe when he grins at her with the bright, brilliant smile that holds mature echoes of the young man she saw in the old newsclips and videos – Raleigh Becket of the Becket Boys, grown and dangerous.

Mako knows when it crystallises, though – the day he comes back from the markets, sits down at the table where she's reviewing the news and places a paper bag in front of her with a smile. Inside, four little rice-powdered _daifuku_ sit in complacent roundness, a treat Mako has not seen in many years.

"Raleigh— This must have cost—"

"Two days of ration tickets. It's okay, we've got enough – I did calculations." He sits back and grins. "誕生日おめでと."

Mako stares at him. She had forgotten the date, lost in the blur of days coming and going. And he remembered. Her voice doesn't work, her throat choked with something more than mere words.

"Hey." The smile fades as she gets up from the table and he starts to follow her, "I'm sorry, Mako—I thought you liked—"

She throws her arms around him, burrowing into the warm width of his chest. It's _bubble-and-squeak_ all over again, but this is Raleigh's gift to her and now Mako understands how Tamsin felt when _sensei_ put the dish before them that night – why she ate every mouthful, and smiled at _sensei_ all evening.

"Oh," Raleigh says before his arms come around her, gently at first, then tighter when she doesn't move away. "Okay."

~oOo~

When he climbs into bed that night, she curls up against him – well, rests her forehead against his shoulderblades. Raleigh falls asleep with her breath shivering down his spine and an ache in his throat. He wakes with Mako snuggled down in his arms, his nose in her hair.

In his head, he can hear Yancy laughing. _Oh, bro, you're in so much trouble._

~oOo~

Sometime during the change of the seasons, Mako starts feeling restless. The apartment is too small, her skin is too tight, everything annoys her.

The peace she found here through the winter cold is gone, leaving an edginess that has no outlet - until the afternoon Raleigh comes home from the markets, his clothes smeared and spattered with mud.

His grin is sheepish as he stands in the doorway. "I, uh, got waylaid by the neighbourhood kids on the way home– they needed a _kaiju_ to kill. Pass me a towel and some clean clothing? I'll go down to the laundromat and wash these now."

"Shower now," she tells him. "You can take the laundry later."

She listens to the shower while she mops the floor. It needed cleaning anyway.

Someday, Mako thinks as she pours out the dirty water, she will live out in the open countryside again – the way she did in her childhood. She is tired of cramped boxes in busy cities, for all that she is accustomed to living in them. And Raleigh grew up in the suburbia of a small American city, so perhaps he will not mind...

It occurs to her that she is making plans for the future and including Raleigh in them, when she has not explicitly asked about his plans.

The bathroom door opens. Mako looks up.

His hair and skin are still damp from the shower, his bare skin reddened from the heat. One hand grips the ends of the towel slung around his hips as he meets her gaze, and his step hitches. "Forgot my clothes."

The first time she saw him undressed, Mako mostly saw the scars.

She doesn't notice the scars anymore, just Raleigh. Big and beautiful, staying with her, looking after her, needing her, _loving_ her.

And she wants him, physically desires him, sharp as a knife, the realisation seizing her breath, kicking her ribs.

"What is it?"

It feels like a thousand yards across the room. His hand clenches on the towel as she takes it from him, stripping him naked to her gaze, to her heart. "Mako," his voice trembles with hope and hesitation. "Be sure. I can't go back."

"I'm sure." She lifts her face to his, and soft lips fit over hers – a tense and delicate taste before something in him relaxes at the reality and he slides deeper, making them both sigh.

Raleigh backs her over to the bed and helps her undress with nips and fingertip traces and compliments whispered into her skin. And Mako lets herself melt into the taste and scent and feel of him, until she doesn't know where she ends and Raleigh begins.

~oOo~

They spend most of the next two weeks in bed...on the table, up against the wall, in the shower... She feels like glory when he climbs in beside her at night, and smells like home when he wakes in her arms in the morning. There are still days when she doesn't get out of bed, but then, neither does he.

In Raleigh's opinion, Mako makes the cutest sounds during lovemaking, and May is the best month ever.

~oOo~

Mako is nervous going back to Tokyo – not because of _sensei_ and the memorial ceremony, or the bad memories of Onibaba, but because it requires facing the people she left behind when she ran away from the PPDC.

Her cheeks are pink with shame when Herc walks across the tarmac towards her, his gaze steady on her face. "You okay?"

"Yes." She takes a deep breath. "Hansen-_san_—"

"You needed time away," he says gruffly. "I get that. But you didn't tell anyone you were going – you just vanished. Only reason I didn't panic was 'cause you had Becket."

Mako swallows. She has no defence. She did not consider anyone but herself when she ran. In doing so she left Herc to manage the PPDC, his grief over _sensei_, and his loss of Chuck alone. "I apologise, Hansen-_san_. I have no excuse."

"Yeah, well," his mouth quirks in a tired smile, "that's water under the bridge now. I'm glad you're okay and here. You coming back to Hong Kong anytime soon?"

She looks over at Raleigh, who's just been handed Tendo's year-old son to hold, the little boy studying Raleigh for an uncertain moment before a beaming grin grows on his face. And Mako's insides melt. "I don't think so. We have not discussed it."

"Ah. So do I and my fist need to have a chat with him?"

"Hansen-_san_…" Then Mako registers his grin and alarm turns to exasperation. "If a fist is needful, Hansen_-san_, then I have two."

"That's true." Blue eyes look down, as though abashed, but when he lifts them back up, his expression is serious and earnest. "Mako, seriously...if you ever need anything. Help or…or someone to go to…"

"Thank you." She understands what he is offering. His friendship was with _sensei_, and his work piloting a Jaeger means they have never been truly close, but they are family in a way that has nothing to do with blood or emotional closeness.

And that is _sensei's_ legacy to them all.

"Herc." His name feels awkward on her lips, matching the offer she makes. "If there is anything I or Raleigh can do—"

He shakes his head. "You look after yourself, Miss Mako, and don't worry about me."

~oOo~

He's not surprised when she wants to go back to Hong Kong in the short term. They discuss places to live and what they're going to do now. They're hardly short of options: with their PPDC pensions and bonuses, and the gratitude of the world, they can go anywhere and do anything they want for the rest of their lives.

Mako asks Raleigh what he wants.

"You," he says, and watches her blush.

He'll go where she does.

~oOo~

Her room feels empty when she opens the door – and somehow too large, in spite of it being much smaller than the apartment in Beijing. Behind her, Raleigh has paused on his step, looking at his own door as though steeling himself to open it and go inside.

Mako opens her mouth to call him, but he's already turning on the stair as though he heard her.

Three steps brings him to the base of her stairs, another three brings him inside. The door slams shut behind him, and Raleigh dumps his duffle to the floor. Then his mouth is on hers and somehow she is pushed to the edge of the bed with his hands pulling her t-shirt over her head...

"We only left Beijing..." She pulls one hand free to check her timepiece. "Six hours ago."

"Six hours?" He makes a noise of dismay against her throat as his hands slide around her back and find her bra clasp. "God, no wonder I'm horny."

It is hard not to laugh at him. Harder not to sigh in satisfaction when she strips him of his tee-shirt to slide her hands down his sides.

"Over or under?"

"You, under," she says, and cups him through the denim of his jeans, molding the fabric against his growing erection. "I like watching you."

"You like _riding _me."

One hand palms her breast, hot and petting, and Mako rubs herself against him. "Don't you _like _being ridden, Raleigh?"

Raleigh cups her neck with his free hand and kisses her, grinning. "We should get you a cowboy hat and a fringed jacket..."

Although Mako has never realised how noisy Raleigh is when they're having sex. She was aware that he was vocal, but it did not occur to her that he was _loud_.

Afterwards, she sprawls beneath him, sated and limp and slightly embarrassed as she listens to the voices going past in the corridor outside their room. It is not that she wants him to be quiet, just that she is not comfortable with everyone else knowing exactly what is happening in their room as it happens.

"I think," she says when she has enough breath to speak again, "we must find a place where the neighbours are not close by."

~oOo~

They sit on the stone steps of their house for nearly an hour after the removalists have gone. There is some unpacking to be done, but they brought very little from Hong Kong, and much of what they need is yet to be delivered.

Raleigh leans into the warmth of Mako pressed up against his side, watching the grass wave softly beneath a vivid blue sky.

~oOo~

It is not possible to carry the ocean in a cup, but sometimes even one cup of the ocean's enough.


End file.
